Climate change, vulnerability and security risks - Methodological aspects regarding identification of vulnerable countries and hotspots

This report examines the methodologies used for developing vulnerability or hotspot maps in five recent studies. The main focus is on the extent and way in which different climate, socio-economic and political factors are used in the mapping. Due to the long-term nature of climate change, particular attention is devoted to the temporal consistency of the studies. The identification of geographical areas where human or national security is under violent or non-violent threat is important for several reasons. It can be useful for identifying areas with a high probability of conflict or where adaptation to climate change seems to be particularly urgent, or for comparing the states mainly responsible for most historical and current emissions with the states most vulnerable to climate change. In order to draw relevant conclusions from vulnerability or hotspot study and the maps it provides, it is important that an appropriate time perspective is chosen. In several of the studies analysed in this report, the time perspective underlying the geographical presentations appears to have been chosen rather arbitrarily. Furthermore, although some of the studies analysed include future climate change in the analyses, in general they implicitly assume rather stable socio-economic and political conditions. In order to further develop vulnerability or hotspot maps, it would be most important to find better ways of combining scenarios for climate change with scenarios for future socio-economic and political development. Different kinds of vulnerability and state fragility indices are important foundations for the development of vulnerability/hotspot maps. These indices are often multifactorial systems in which different aspects of vulnerability, including qualitative aspects, are weighted into quantitative indices. Using a single index makes the maps visually attractive, but increases the risk of understating the complexity that defines vulnerability and the risk of violence. It is generally difficult to define the aspects of most importance for the risk of violent conflict or other negative effects on society rom climate change. The studies examined here did not sufficiently deal with issues such as tjhe relative weightings that should be given to the climate change oparameter and the socio-economic and political parameters when identifying the most vulnerable countries or hotspots for conflict.